Comments on: (Late) Predictions for 2015

By: Dexter Peabody

Dexter Peabody — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 21:41:07 +0000

See Orwell on the Spanish Civil War.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Jun 2015 04:46:16 +0000

They already hit $100 million at the first disclosure in 2007. Probably close to twice that by now, much more if you include payments for Bill’s speeches in the form of donations.

This article on more recent disclosures says $30mm for 2014-2015. It also says $16mm for the “last years” at State, which suggests that Bill did not much slow down.

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By: pndpo

pndpo — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 21:38:46 +0000

Cool thanks!

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By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 15:34:16 +0000

I can’t find it now, but I was reading something the other day that Hillary just released all their financials and they’d earned over $100 million since Bill left office.

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By: Gudamor

Gudamor — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 00:19:39 +0000

You might be interested in reading: http://www.gwern.net/Prediction%20markets

It includes a portion on prediction websites, including “PredictionBook (PB) is a general-purpose free-form prediction site. PB is a site intended for personal use and small groups registering predictions; the hope was that LessWrongers would use it whenever they made predictions about things (as they ought to in order to keep their theories grounded in reality). It hasn’t seen much uptake, though not for the lack of my trying.”

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By: pndpo

pndpo — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 20:30:25 +0000

The concept of smart people making reasoned predictions is really interesting. I want to know if some people are better at making predictions generally and what the mechanisms of prediction is. Is it a skill that can be learned?

Thus, I’m making a little web app (it’s very rough right now) for calling predictions and tracking them in a similar vein to this post. It’s currently focused on tracking and predicting memes (the way Dawkins uses the word).

I really don’t want to self-promote, so I’ll just humbly ask:
Is anyone interested in this sort of thing?
Also, does anyone already know of a good prediction tracking tool?

If the response is positive, I’ll add a link. Let me know if I missed some comment guideline.

(PS If anyone wants to contribute mechanistic ideas, it would be helpful. My goal is to include an economy of points that are determined by the accuracy of predictions. I also want to have externally and automatically determined judgements based on the signal of a prediction. It would be very cool to have a chart at the end of a year for yourself to see how well you did and get points based on that.)

EDIT: This is not a real money prediction market ala Predictit (although I’m open to that).

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By: Protagoras

Protagoras — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 04:58:09 +0000

I don’t know the exact role played by the comments. But Ivy president = fundraiser in chief, and I can’t imagine that pissing people off helps fundraising, so I’d be shocked if there weren’t some issues with his performance of the most important part of his job.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 04:39:42 +0000

Yes, he’ll retreat to that life, but it’s not Bill Clinton’s life. The extravert didn’t retire, but spent 2001-2008 averaging a speaking engagement every weekday. (At that scale, he couldn’t charge $200k. I think 100 free, 100 for $100k – total $10million per year, which you can look up on his tax returns.)

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 04:32:04 +0000

Larry Summers immediately got a much more lucrative job, which is hardly the same as a better job. He thought he was toast, so he cashed out in a not very public job. He was surprised to find himself still employable in Washington despite (1) being publicly forced out and (2) selling out.

But I’m not sure that Summers’s remarks on women were such a big part of his termination.

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By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 22:03:26 +0000

Hillary was electable then. She and Obama had a damn near even split of the total votes for nominee when she dropped out. Obama was just light years ahead of everyone else in understanding how to game the delegate pledging system.

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